Car Runs 1 Million Miles on 8 Grams of Thorium

rickymouse
So basically eight grams of thorium could also power a house for the rest of your life. Another gram could get some people through a life of
traveling in a car, if they didn't abuse the fact.

It will not be allowed to be built at this time.

Do you have a solution for the municipal framework to come after energy needs are met and don't come at a cost?

How would you motivate the private sector to invest into space technology and colonization to avert population control laws? Would there even be a
private sector? How about tax monies, would governments be a thing of the past? Surely if nobody has to worry about the costs of transportation and
shelter, land will become the next commodity and the value of food will skyrocket.

Thorium is amazing fuel. Though its radioactive, it doesn't need as much protection as uranium needs. Basically its radiation doesn't even penetrate
skin, but aerosols are dangerous. Also it cannot sustain chain reaction, the reaction can be stopped when wanted, instantly. Zero risk of meltdown.

There is also so much Thorium on Earth that its enough for hundreds of years, about as much as Lead. And it doesn't need enrichment as Uranium
does.

And why we aren't using it? Simple, as it cannot sustain chain reaction, it cannot be used as nuclear weapons. And as its possible to make really
small and lightweight reactors for it, oil heating and combustion engines would become useless. Oil sector doesn't want that.

It still produces dangerous by-products, but less longer half-life products like Plutonium, than Uranium reaction. Most of by-products are short
lived.

Thorneblood
Isn't the DoD supposed to secretly possess Thorium Plasma batteries or some such thing? They got it from a russian scientists that went "missing"?

That was the next scam after the thorium laser. Add some sciency word after thorium and you've got yet another bit of juicy scam bait.

Here's your guide. Lasers and plasma are electron shell phenomena. It doesn't matter to the nucleus WHAT you do to the ionization state or electron
orbital transition state. Nothing at all. About the only nuclear effect you can change by manipulating electrons is the rate of beta decay or inverse
beta decay in some lab setups. You can't cause fission by lasing a fissile. You don't get extra energy in the output of a laser by lasing a fissile.
It just doesn't care. Same with ionizing one and creating plasma. That's all electrons. The nucleus doesn't care.

As fantastic as this is, the general public uneducated and ignorant as it applies to the safety, handling, and hazard risks of radioactive materials
will likely run around in circles flapping their hands in alarmist panic over potential Fukishimas driving all over the road.

In this case, (unusually), they'd be right.

Just think about the energy numbers.

If you're going to get a buttload of energy out of this 8 grams of thorium, you're going to get enough radioactive waste with a substantial energy
flux as well. You will have plenty of hard gamma emitters under the hood.

Natural thorium decays very slowly compared to many other radioactive materials, and the ALPHA radiation emitted cannot
penetrate human skin meaning owning and handling small amounts of thorium, such as a gas mantle, is considered safe.

What was that? Alpha radiation? hmmm.
What kind of shielding does one need for Alpha radiation?

Now, of course, that's Natural Thorium decay.

The article details something about creating a Thorium Laser, whatever that is, to drive a heat reaction which in turn powers a steam turbine.
I'm not going to pretend to know what that's all about, but, considering that Thorium is the base for the engine, and Thorium is the basis because
of its relative safety such that it's been used in gas mantle lanterns with zero shielding for decades, I'm going to stick with my earlier
statement.

While that may be so, I'll suspend any alarmism until we have an actual working Thorium based solution we can poke at and examine in thorough
detail.

Considering the already developed technology of RTGs using more energetic fuel sources than Thorium, were it legal, and cost effective, I'd
personally, quite happily facilitate one for home power, with sufficient shielding, of course.

We are, however, talking about Thorium reactors, or engines, and there's actually quite a fair bit of research going on, especially out of China for
development of the technology, as well as several differing methodologies and approaches to the problem with some that will certainly be safer than
others, but, all in all overwhelmingly safer than current nuclear energy solutions.

Will we eventually have a vehicle-safe Thorium based power source?
According the article in OP, the kinks are still being worked out, but, we'll see.

Perspective; similar rhetoric as is being made against a Thorium solution, could easily be leveled against gasoline. Gasoline is volatile, explosive,
the fumes toxic. Direct skin contact can increase cancer risk. Carbon Monoxide byproduct fumes can be deadly. Bombs can be made out of gasoline!
The list of the dangers of Gasoline can go on and on.

Me?
I'm going to wait for this technology to do something, and as it stands, from the current view, it looks much safer, more versatile, longer lasting,
with greater potential and sustainability than gasoline.

Weapons grade is U-234... and the Thorium is all lighter than that, it is lower down the chain. It is impossible to make weapons grade Uranium out of
Thorium... Sir you know not of what you speak.

You do get nuclear transmutation under neutron bombardment, but the U-235 product would be tiny and you have little to no way of extracting it from
the core of the breeder in any quantity. U-235 would be reacted away in such a reactor and processed into something else, the whole point of the
thorium reactor is that you don't run into the same issues with criticality and sustaining a chain like in Uranium reactors.

Furthermore, you get alphas and gammas from many decays in the Uranium and Thorium series.

Thorium can be used to "breed" Uranium-233, which while not as good for a weapon as U-235, will work in one. Th-232 can absorb a neutron, and then
become U-233.

Thorium (Th-232) is not itself fissile and so is not directly usable in a thermal neutron reactor – in this regard it is very similar to
uranium-238. However, it is ‘fertile’ and upon absorbing a neutron will transmute to uranium-233 (U-233)a, which is an excellent fissile fuel
materialb. Thorium fuel concepts therefore require that Th-232 is first irradiated in a reactor to provide the necessary neutron dosing. The U-233
that is produced can either be chemically separated from the parent thorium fuel and recycled into new fuel, or the U-233 may be usable ‘in-situ’
in the same fuel form.
Thorium fuels therefore need a fissile material as a ‘driver’ so that a chain reaction (and thus supply of surplus neutrons) can be maintained.
The only fissile driver options are U-233, U-235 or Pu-239 (none of which is easy to supply).

You do get nuclear transmutation under neutron bombardment, but the U-235 product would be tiny and you have little to no way of extracting it
from the core of the breeder in any quantity.

This article agrees with you.

So if thorium would be a safe and abundant fuel source for vehicles, other devices and even power stations, why is it not being utilized
widely?

Stevens, Hedrick and Bryan all have the same answer: After World War II, a strategic decision was undertaken by industrialized nations to pursue
uranium-driven energy instead, because its by-product – plutonium – could be weaponized. By contrast, it is almost impossible to make a bomb out
of thorium.

You're right, you wouldn't get U-235, you'd get U-233. While not optimum for weapons fuel, it is usable.

The piece highlights ways in which small quantities of uranium-233, a material useable in nuclear weapons, could be produced covertly from
thorium, by chemically separating another isotope, protactinium-233, during its formation.
The chemical processes that are needed for protactinium separation could possibly be undertaken using standard lab equipment, potentially allowing it
to happen in secret, and beyond the oversight of organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the paper says.
The authors note that, from previous experiments to separate protactinium-233, it is feasible that just 1.6 tonnes of thorium metal would be enough to
produce 8kg of uranium-233 which is the minimum amount required for a nuclear weapon. Using the process identified in their paper, they add that this
could be done "in less than a year."

As fantastic as this is, the general public uneducated and ignorant as it applies to the safety, handling, and hazard risks of radioactive
materials will likely run around in circles flapping their hands in alarmist panic over potential Fukishimas driving all over the road.

No, actually the "concern" is one of access to dirty bomb materials. And not by "circle flapping" consumers either.

...amid widespread concerns about terrorism, would governments allow scores of nuclear sources to roam the freeways? Processed thorium can produce
uranium 233 as a byproduct. Would governments allow charging an electric vehicle using radioactive material in private garages?

this has worked in the thorium-powered 2009, Cadillac World Thorium Fuel Concept

What makes you say it didn't work?

You missed the "concept" part? This was covered a fuel few times.

Here's a comment from another blog post (the only people who really covered it because it was from press releases by someone probably trying to raise
investor cap)

Wow, if you are forwarding Thorium Car nonsense this is perhaps the list time I visit this site. I certainly hope the people you quote as saying
it possible were simply misquoted. Please, everyone realize this Thorium Car nonsense was just started by some idiot or scam artist because of some
obscure scientific interest in a Thorium laser emission phenomenom with zero practical application. The other end of the spectrum is a full fledged
mini nuclear reactor in a car which is just about equally as absurd.

Edit: I just read the article for more detail. I'd originally assumed they were taking an RTG approach similar the Curiosity rover. Seems
they're attempting to create a Thorium Laser based engine to heat water to drive a turbine?

A boiling water or pressurized water reactor, correct. The same principle is currently used in Nuclear powered submarines. Except decay heat from
uranium is used to heat water, not Thorium.

But there still is skepticism in the nuclear-energy research world about using thorium as a power source, especially in mobile applications.

Reza Hashemi-Nezhad, director of the Institute of Nuclear Science at the University of Sydney, Australia, says nuclear power plants already run
submarines and could operate oil tankers, “but they are not small enough to fit in the boot (trunk) of a car.”

Thats because although the reactor itself might be scalable and reduced to "500 pounds", the rest of the apparatus required to safely contain it in
case of emergency, like a 100 mile per hour crash on the freeway, for instance. Adding the mini turbines, drive motors, cooling return loop and heat
exchangers would make it a beast of a steam engine.

“The issue is having a customized application that is purpose-made,” he says, admitting that developing a portable and usable turbine and
generator is proving to be a tougher task than the laser-thorium unit.

“How do you take the laser and put these things together efficiently?” he asks rhetorically.

As someone else already pointed out, the efficiency experts are still at the drawing board.

You're right, you wouldn't get U-235, you'd get U-233. While not optimum for weapons fuel, it is usable.

More than a little effort would be required to refine the material, cast it into useable core elements of a nuclear weapon. However, enriched clouds
of Thorium dust floating down main street would ruin things for everybody.

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